Olivia’s Owls

March 6, 2011

My cute little niece Olivia turned six! I knew I’d have to make some kick-butt cupcakes for her birthday party so I turned to my girlfriend Martha Stewart for some ideas….. I found these cute little owls (I know, owls aren’t typically considered cute) and decided I’d tweak some things and make them my own. Olivia is not your standard six year old, she loves birds, has bug catching kits, and knows WAY too many latin plant names..so when I saw the owls I knew she’d like them :)

Like I’ve talked about before, I don’t like cupcakes that have unnecessary toppings.. in this case I’m talking about the pretzels that Martha used to make the eyes so I decided to pipe the outlines with frosting. Whatever.

I also used the same chocolate cupcake recipe from the last post on Caramel Buttercream. As for the decoration, which is what this post is all about, you’ll need two colors of frosting. I made the caramel buttercream, divided it in half, and used some brown food coloring to tint one half darker. This creates two colors which look super cute when you’re piping the “feathers” on the owls. Realistically you could flavor your frosting however you’d like.

To create the base & eyes:

1. You will first need a thin layer of whichever frosting (usually the lightest color) spread on each cupcake. This will create a background for their eyes.

2. Spoon a small amount of the darker frosting into a ziptop bag with a small corner cut off or a piping bag with a small writing tip. Create the outline of the eyes following my example.

3. Pipe two eyes or you can use mini chocolate chips like I did. Anything dark will work, use your imagination and just make sure it’s edible.

1. Spoon one frosting on the left side and the other frosting on the right so that it will pipe two colors at once. :)

2. Starting from around the outline of the eyes create small leafs feathers around the entire cupcake, pulling the tip out at an angle. Continue until the owl is filled in.

Can you believe it’s that simple? And making the feathers like this makes for the perfect amount of frosting to end up on the cupcake! Yes, I used these for a birthday, but you can use them for Halloween or a barnyard theme…use your imagination! :) Boring cupcakes are so 1998.

Upon arriving at the party I was greeted by Olivia and of course she wanted to see the cupcakes right away.. I lowered my carrying case to show her and she says “Balloons??” Ugh. Maybe the girl needs glasses. After my Mom (Shirl the Pearl) makes an owl noise to hint to her, she says “They’re owls??” Oh well, I tried.